2006
2005 2006 2007 Events * China Overtakes the U.S. as the planet's largest CO2 emitter * Ken Loach wins the Palme D'Or for The Wind That Shakes the Barley * Orhan Pamuk wins Nobel Prize for Literature. Read Snow * Blood Diamond is released. * Catch a Fire is released. * Children of Men is released. * Brutally truthful parody of American popular culture the rlease of the film Idiocracy. * Eight seperate insurgencies in India take the lives of 1,273 insurgents and 1,492 security personnel and civilians. These insurgencioes are ignored in racist, Eurocentric U.S. news coverage of international affairs. * 3,196 soldiers desert from the U.S. Army in fiscal year 2006. =Timeline= January January * U.S. President George W. Bush's "Positive Rating" is 43%. January 1 * Eight car bombs explode in Baghdad, killing as many as 40. Three car bombs explode in Kirkuk, wounding 12. * Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that European countries created Israel after the Second World War to continue the expulsion of the Jews from Europe. * Iran threatened a "crushing reponse" if the United States and/or Israel attacked its nuclear and military facilities. * Partially (51%) state owned Russian energy firm GAZPROM cuts off pipeline shipments of natural gas to Ukraine in price dispute. Later restored. * A cynical President G.W. Bush uses wounded American soldiers at Brooke Army Medical Center as props to defend unconstitutional warrant-less domestic NSA electronic surveillance program. January 3 * U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Bolton asserts that the permanent UN Security Council members, the U.S., Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom, should also be on the new Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council. January 4 * Poland's new conservative government purges 10 Polish ambassadors, including its ambassador to Britain, Germsany and Israel, with pre-1989 links to "communist-era special services or to the communist party." * Pres. George W. Bush claims that the U.S. strategy in Iraq is succeeding. Poor timing given events on the ground the next day. January 5 * Suicide bombing in Tirin Kot, Afghanistan kills 10 Afghanis. * 11 U.S. soldiers and more than 120 Iraqi police recuits and civilians are killed in the war. The number of U.S. military fatalities reaches 2,192. * On his 700 Club television program Rev. Pat Robertson quotes the Prophet Joel and comments that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is on the point of death because, "He was dividing God's land, and I would say woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the European Union, the United Nations, or the United States of America. God says: 'This land belongs to me. You'd better leave it alone.'" Secularists suspect that Sharon's stroke might have something to do with a poor diet, lack of exercise and stress. Skeptics wonder why God didn't smite Sharon for his role in the Sabra and Shatila atrocity. January 6 * More than 5000 demonstrators chanted slogans denouncing U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and Sunni Arab leaders in Sadr City (Baghdad) after Friday prayers in a protest called by the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. January 8 * Under pressure from fellow Republicans Tom Delay stepped down as House majority leader. January 9 * 17 American soldiers die in Iraq, 12 in a crashing US-60 Blackhawk helicopter. * Gen. Ahmad Kazemi, commander of the ground forces of the Revolutionary Guards, together with his chief of operations, Gen. Saeed Soleimani, were killed in a plane crash in northern Iran. January 10 * Protest at the Federal Court House in Rome Georgia by the Racial Justice Campaign Against Operation Meth Merchant. January 11 * Australian Prime Minister John Howard hosted the meeting of the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (AP6), a.k.a. the Coalition of the Unwilling in Sydney. The six participating governments (U.S., Australia, Japan, China, South Korea and India) have either refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol or have responded to the second Bush adminsitration's efforts to undermine the only serious global warming treaty. * Pres. George W. Bush flip-flops on congressional hearings on his unconstitutional domestic eavesdropping program, saying that it is "good for democracy." Bush had earlier opposed the hearings. * U.S. CIA conducts airstrike on two houses in a village in remote northwestern Pakistan, killing 18 but failing to kill the primary target: al-Qaeda's second in command Ayman al-Zawahiri. * Oklahoma Christian University dropped its new policy of firing employees who get divorced. January 14 * Democrat Timothy M. Kaine sworn in as Governor of Virginia. January 15 * Car bomb in Kandahar, Afghanistan killed three, including a senior Canadian diplomat. * January 15-19: Riots against UN Peacekeepers rock Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire. January 16 * Motorbike bomb explodes in Spinboldek, Afghanistan and kills 21. January 17 * Jane Goodall awarded the Legion of Honor. January 19 * Osama bin Laden releases another audio tape, which confirms that he is still alive and at large 4 years after 9/11. * V.P. Dick Cheney gives a speech defending covert domestic surveillance at the Manhattan Institute (a conservative think tank), which confirms once again that he is still alive and at large. * Andrew Jones, head of the legitimate sounding Bruin Alumni Association, announced that he will pay agents to monitor lectures of liberal UCLA professors who refuse to give equal time to crackpot conservative ideas. Several Bruin Alumni Association Board members jump ship. * Liberal Party (conservative) Australian government is battered by accusations that AWB paid enormous kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's government for wheat in the 1996-2003 UN oil-for-food program. * Attorney Generalissimo Alberto Gonzalez subpeonas Google to search engine records of on-line searches. Why isn't the Justice Department more interested in white collar crime? Too busy peeping in electronic keyholes? January 20 * French Pres. Chirac threatened retaliation against any state using terrorism against France, including the use of possible nuclear strikes. That states may deny having sponsored terrorism exposes the weakness of such threats. * Judge T.S. Ellis, III sentences Israeli spy Larry Franklin to 151 months in prison and fines him $10,000. * Islamic Jihad suicide bomber kills 19 in Tel Aviv. * Iranian President visits Syria. See Iranian Nuclear Crisis Timeline. * Gabonese Pres. Omar Bongo Ondimba appoints Eyeghe Ndong Prime Minister. * Rioting erupts in Marshallville, Georgia following the death of Clarence Walker, an African-Ameican, in police custody. White police chief's house is burned. January 21 * Attorney Generalissimo Alberto Gonzalez orders indictment of 21 animal rights activists as "terrorists." Meanwhile the United States military and intelligence agencies still have not found Osama bin Laden. January 22 * Shaul Mofaz, Defense Minister for nuclear armed Israel, made thinly velied threats to attack Iran if it proceeded with a nuclear program that may give it nuclear weapons. * Portugese presidential election. * Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer Jr. is found guilty of having suffocated a prisoner of war during interogation in 2003. For killing Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush during torture, Welshofer was sentenced to serve only 3 years and 3 months in prison. Well done America! No one can claim that we don't respect human life! January 23 * Iran responded to the the threat of military attack by Israeli Defense Minister by describing it as a form of psychological warfare. * Canadian general election gives the Grits (Conservative Party) something approximating an election victory. They take to 36.3% of the vote. Liberal Party wins 30.2%, New Democratic Party wins 17.5% and le Bloc Quebecois wins 10.5%. January 24 * Ethnic Tamil journalist Subramaniyam Sugitharajah is assassinated in Trincomalee, Sri Lanka. January 25 * Palestinian general election produces surprise Hamas election victory. * Pope Benedict XVI issues 71 page "God is Love" encyclical decrying sex without love as no longer integrated into our total being and no longer a vital expression of our whole being. But to paraphrase Woody Allen, as experiences that are no longer integrated etc. go, sex without love is still pretty good. January 27 * Hamas leaders in Gaza "go to ground" fearing they will be targeted in Israeli airborne assassinations. * Medical marijuana activist and former Libertarian candidate for Governor Steve Kubby was arrested in Los Angeles after returning form a 5 year exile in Canada. His oncologist worries that his rare form of cancer, pheochromocytoma, could threaten his life if he isn't allowed to continue using cannabis. January 29 * Conservative Italian newspaper Il Giornale reports that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi vowed that he would not have sex until the April 9 2006 general elections. Since sexually repressed Italians were probably going to vote for one of the rightist parties in his coalition government anyway, Mr. B's embarassing campaign promise seems unlikely to change the election outcome. January 30 * Rev. Jessie Jackson announces that he plans a Hurricane Katrina Government Response Disaster protest on March 1, 2006. January 31 * Coretta Scot King dies. * Britain cohosts international summit with the U.S. in London on problems in Afghanistan: financing development and puppet government, poverty, opium, resurging Islamist insurgency. * Meeting of the 5 permanent UN Security Council members in London agrees that the IAEA should report to the full UN Security Council on what Iran must do to cooperate with the agency, but not until March 6!. U.S. Secretary of State Rice apparently failed to convince them to take action sooner. * IED kills 100th British soldier to die in the War in Iraq, in Umm Qasr in Basra province. * ENRON trial opens in Houston. Former ENRON employees still hurting from house of cards corporate crime and America still hurting from the ENRON designed second Bush administration's "energy policy." February February * U.S. President George W. Bush's "Positive Rating" is 40%. February 2 * The Capitol Police apologize for the idiotic decisison to arrest Cindy Sheehan after she spotted wearing t-shirts with the message "2,245 Dead. How many more?" while sitting in the House Gallery during Pres. George W. Bush's State of Union Address. Ironically the word "freedom" was used repeatedly in the speech. Beverly Young, wife of a Republican Representative from Florida, was also arrested for wearing a pro-war tee-shirt, perhaps to make it apear the Capitol Police were merely enforcing fashion rules. February 4 * Pentagon issues Quadrennial Defense Review. February 5 * Costa Rica conducts simultaneous presidential and legislative elections. Election returns reveal a tight race between Oscar Arias and Otton Solis in an election that featured low turnout, apparently in protest against recent corruption scandals. * Violent temper tantrums continue to erupt across the Islamic world in reponse to the publication of cartoons interpreted as blasphemous by pious fundamentalists. That female illiteracy and infant mortality rates remain scandalously high in many Islamic countries seems to occupy the minds of the faithful not at all. * Lacking more productive uses for their time, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff sent a letter to the Washington Post condemning a brilliant political cartoon by Tom Toles aimed at the prickly Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The Joint Chiefs demanded more sensitivity in the future. Perhaps "sensitivity" is PentagonSpeak for "self-censorship." Seems that Toles scored a direct rhetorical hit on the Gray Lady! * Pittsburgh defeats Seattle in the Superbowl 21 to 10. February 6 * Rioting in the capitals of several predominantly Islamic couintries as well as in Delhi, India to protest the publication of cartoons lampooning the Prophet Muhammad. U.S. installed Afghani President and fashionista Hamid Karzai said he had "strong objections" to the cartoons. * Determined to convince all non-Muslims that Islam drives otherwise sane humans over the edge, cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed demanded the execution of the cartoonist who lampooned the Prophet Muhammad. Photos of the Syrian born cleric reveal an individual with a serious weight problem. * Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee to answer questions about why an administration that justifies its War in Iraq and War on Terror in the name of freedom has been undertalking warantless survelliance of American citizens. "Just trust us" is the response. * U.S. Gen. Mark Kimmitt admits that the presence of 300,000 U.S. military personnel add to the instability in the Middle East during a speech to the International Institute for Strategic Studies. February 7 * Righist millennialist Rev. John Hagee establishes Christians United for Isreal. * Egytian-British Islamist cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri is found guilt of inciting racial hatred. * Afghani police in Kabul kill 4 protesters. They give up their lives to express anger about blasphemy expressed cartoons published in distant non-Islamic country. * 3 killed and 11 wounded in suicide bombing of guard post outside police headquarters in Kandahar, Afghanistan. * French law decree permits limited stem cell research on human embryos. * Haitians vote in first presidential elections in six years. February 8 * False alarm evacuation of the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington, DC when a detection device mistakenly identified nerve gas in the building. February 9 * Suicide bomber kills 28 people in a Shi'a religious procession marking Ashura in Hunga, Pakistan (125 miles from Islamabad). The Shi'a are an oppressed religous minority in Pakistan, as are the ethnic Shi'a Hazzara in neighboring Afghanistan. * Egyptian diplomat Hossam Al Musseli is kidnapped in Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City. Hamas condemns the kidnapping. * City of Oakland settles with anti-war demonstrators who accuse it's police of excessive force for another $393,000. That brings the total to settle the cases to $1.3 million. * New York Times reports that POWs are being strapped to chairs and forcefed with tubes in response to their hunger strike. * Feeling a desperate need to appear competent in prosecuting the "Global War on Terror," Pres. George W. Bush reveals details of a 2002 al-Qaeda plot to hijack and crash airliners into the Bank Tower or Library Tower in Los Angeles. Bush misspeaks and refers to the building as the Liberty Tower. February 10 * Fighting erupts between Sunni and Shi'a in Hungu, Pakistan in the aftermath of a suicide bombing on February 9. 10 more die as they exchange small arms and rocket fire. * Scooter Libby testifies that he was told to leak data to reporters that Iraq was trying to obtain weapons of mass destruction. Neoconservatives deceive those they consider enemies, a practice justified by Straussian philosophy. * NBC Nightly News runs a nakedly biased news report on anti-Winter Olympics protesters who are attacked as a "motley mix" who are a "real threat.' Could such hostile news coverage have anything to do with NBC having the rights to broadcast the Winter Olympics from Turin? * The second Bush administration announces plan to sell off 300,000 acres of National Forests, our American patrimony, to raise revenue needed because of its budgetary mismanagement and systemic corruption. Corrupt regimes often engage in the legal looting of state assets. February 11 * Sheik Abdul Rahman al-Seedes, Imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca and all round Medieval nightmare called on other countries to enact laws that condemn "insults" against the prophet Muhammad and Islamic holy sites and demanded that a certain Danish cartoonist be tried for a presumably ex post facto crime. The people of Saudi Arabia continue to suffer under the most primitive legal system on the planet and this cleric is worried about cartoons published in languages he can't understand. * Vice President Dick Cheney accidently shoots fellow hunter Harry Whittington, perhaps mistaking the 78 year old lawyer for a quail. February 12 * Happy Darwin Day! February 13 * Texas officials say that both V.P. Dick Cheney and his shoting victim Harry Whittington would be issued warning citations for hunting without a proper game stamp on their hunting licenses. Abiding by the law is only for little people, especially in Texas. * Rioting on Port au Prince, Haiti as supporters of populist oresidential candidate Rene Preval learn that he may not receive a majority of the vote and may thus have to compete against the other leading vote geter in a run-off election. February 14 * Riots rock the diplomatic district in Lahore, Pakistan; more Islamist political agitiation about the content of newspaper cartoons. * Revelations that V.P. Dick Cheney's shooting victim suffered a "minor heart attack" and that the hunters were actually shooting at just relased farm raised quail. This is what conservatives believe to be a "manly sport." February 15 * Three more people are killed in Pakistan in Islamist rioting about the content of cartoons. Pakistan's neo-medieval penal code makes desecration of the Koran punishable by life imprisonment and any insult to the Prophet Muhammad punishable by death. * Previously unpublished photos of torture at Abu Ghraib Prison appear on Australian television show Dateline. Guardian Stoy and Photos. * Sen. Chuck Hagel tells Sec. of State Condoleezza Rice, "I don't see, Madame Secretary, how things are getting better. I think things are getting worse. I think they're getting worse in Iraq. I think they're getting worse in Iran" during Senate Foreign Relations Committee. February 16 * U.S. General in Iraq admits the Iraqi Interior Ministry has been operating a Shi'a death squad. Foreshadowing of future politics in "democratic" Iraq. * Rene Preval is declared the elected President of Haiti. * Paul Avrich, historian of anarchism, dies in Manhattan. February 17 * Dancing in the streets of Port au Prince at the news of Rene Preval's election as President of Haiti. * Speaking to the National Press Club, Richard Dreyfus warned about the danger of "political hypnosis" and called for the impeachment of George W. Bush. * Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte and U.S. Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales announce that the the Office of National Security Intelligence, part of the Drug Enforcement Administration's Intelligence Division, is the 16th member of the Intelligence Community (IC). Washington, DC just got spookier. * Youth protest/riot in Benghazi. Continues to February 18. Elven killed. Italian consulate is burned. February 18 * Hamas majority Palestinian parliament sworn in. * Italian Reform Minister and Lega Nord ras Roberto Calderoli is forced to resign after Islamist protesters attack Italian consulate in Benghazi, Libya on February 17 because of his stunt--revealing that he was wearing a tee-shirt printed with a Danish cartoon depicting the prophet Muhammad. Several die in Benghazi. February 19 * Rioting about "blasphemous" cartoon content in predominantly Muslim northern Nigeria causes 10 Christian churches to be burned and 16 deaths. * Seeking to cash in on the controversy Uttar Pradesh Minister of Minority Welfare Yaqoob Qureshi offered a $14 million reward to anyone who beheads one of the Danish cartoonists who offended tender Muslim sensibilities. So beheading a real human being is OK but cartoon images are unacceptable? February 20 * Venezuelan Pres. Hugo Chavez makes fun of U.S. Sec. of State Condoleezza Rice but his verbal jibes are labeled an "attack" in the U.S. press. February 21 * Gen. Ratko Mladic located and his surrender is negotiated. * 22 dead and 28 injured in car bomb blast in Baghdad. February 22 * Journal Health Care projects that by 2015 one-fifth of American spending will be on health care and that the health care sector will total $4 trillion. * Shi'a Al-Askari Mosque in Samarra, Iraq is destroyed by a bombing. February 23 * Iraq descends into long expected sectarian civil war as Shi'a attack dozens of Sunni mosques, kill hundreds, including Sunni clerics and prisoners in reprisal for the attack on the al-Askari Mosque. This is the bloody chaos that the neo-conservatives made inevitable with the decision to preemptively invade Iraq. * Israeli military kills 5 Palestinians in the Balata Refugee Camp in the West Bank. February 24 * Second Bush Administration Middle East Policy has collapsed: Baghdad is under daytime curfew, the Egyptian government will continue to fund the Palestinian Authority, an attack on the Abqiaq Oil Refinery in eastern Saudi Arabia drove world crude oil prices over $62 a barrel, Osama bin Laden is still alive and free, Afghanistan is a narco-state, the Iranian government appears intent on using their civil nuclear program as a cover for acquiring nuclear weapons, and Washington's neo-cons are escaping into a fantasy of liberal democratic regime change in Teheran. * London Mayor Ken Livingstone sanctioned by the Standards Board for England by suspension for one month in punishment for insensitive remarks directed at a Jewish reporter. February 25 * Iraqi government extends daylight curfew into second day but seems unable to prevent violence by Shi'a against Sunni. More death squad killings discovered. * Brawling erupts at ne-Nazi rally in Orlando, FL. Police make 17 arrests. February 26 * February 26-March 1: Deadly prison rioting at Policharki Prison in Kabul, Afghanistan. * Iraqi government extends daylight curfew for a third day. More bombings and killings, including 2 U.S. soldiers. * Anti-cartoon protests and rioting in Lahore, Pakistan led by Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) result in 70 arrests. * Wingnuts lose fight in California Republican Party Convention in San Jose to pass resolution with veiled criticism of opportunistic populist Republican Gov. Arnold Schwartznegger. February 27 * Tens of thousands of protesters against the government of Prime Minister and plutocrat Thaksin Shinawatra gather in Bangkok near Royal Palace and chant "Thaksin Get Out." * Wal Mart executive who enjoys generous health benefits, H. Lee Scott Jr., criticized state legislation intended to improve Wal-Mart's health benefits as scoring "short-term political points" but not solving "America's health care challenges." February 28 * Baghdad bombings kill 41. * Ehab Elmaghraby, an Egyptian national victimized by hysterical second Bush administration after 9/11, settles with the U.S. gov't for a cash award of $300,000. * British High Court blocs suspension of London Mayor Ken Livingstone. March March * U.S. President George W. Bush's "Positive Rating" is 36%. March 1 * Pres. George W. Bush makes previouslt unannounced visit to Afghanistan. Flies into Bagram Airbase (did he visit the prisoners in the wire cages?) and helicopters into nearby Kabul. Refuses to answer a reporter's question about the worsenign situation in Afghanistan and predicts that Osama bin ladsen would not elude authorities forever. * Bombings kill at least 30 in Baghdad. Iraqi government forces are unable or unwilling to stop the sectarian civil war. * Violence narowly averted at event "organized" by College Republicans and junior wingnut The United American Committee at the University of California, Irvine. * In Germany a dead cat is discovered to have been infected with H5N1 (bird flu). * Hurricane Katrina Government Response Disaster protest march across the Crescent City Connection. * Colleen Carroll Campbell describes New York Senator Hillary Clinton as "shrill" twice on Fox News Live. March 2 * Pres. George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Singh sign a nuclear deal that rewards India for having done what Iran is condemned for attempting to do-use a civil nuclear program as cover for acquiring wherewithal to build nuclear weapons. Fait accompli. * Bombing at U.S. consulate in Karachi kills 4 and wounds 48 others. Pres. George W. Bush postures as standing tall and says he is still going to go on to Pakistan. * Video evidence confirming Pres. George W. Bush and Homeland Security Sec. Chertoff as having been warned that the levees protecting New Orleans could break exposes their lies of having been unaware of the threat. Another example of Republican factual relativism documented beyond question. * CBS reports that intelligence officials are reporting a possible spectacular "Big Bang" terrorist attack in Iraq against one for more high profile targets. * Students at Overland High School stage a walk-out in protest over the suspension of a teacher Jay Bennish for comments made about President George W. Bush. Bennish's comments on current affairs were taped by a pimply sophomore informant. March 3 * Continued daytime curfew in Baghdad. Keeps the foreign reporters in the Green Zone and away from the chaos and carnage. * Speaking to a rally of 150,000 supporters in Bangkok, Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra announces that the April 2 election will be a referendum on his leadership: "If I fail to win half the ballots, or if more than half of the voters choose to abstain, I will not become the prime minister if the people do not want me." March 4 * Pres. George W. Bush travels to Islamabad, Pakistan to discuss democracy and insurgency with Pakistani miltiary dictator Gen. Pervez Musharraf. March 6 * More Bombings in Baghdad and the Iraqi Parliament is called into session by Pres. Jalal Talabani to elect a government. * Massive street preotests in Bangkok demand resignation of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Trading volume on the Stock Exchange of Thailand declines. March 7 * As if the planet needed more prof that religion stimulates political extremism, 20 people were killed and 50 injured in a sectarian bombing of the Sankat Mochan Shrine in the Hindu holy city of Varanasi. Authorities fear sectarian violence between Hindus and Muslims in Uttar Pradesh. * Tom Delay defeats three challengers in his district's Republican Primary, taking 62% of the vote. March 8 * In a demonstration of the increasing incoherence of Republican culture war politics, South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds signed an abortion bill into state law that he denies actually supporting. The law makes it a felony offense for a doctor to perform an abortion unless it was necessary to save the life of a pregnant woman and excludes exceptions for rape and incest. Once again, religion stimulates political extremism. * Someone understands symbolic irony in Iraq. 50 employees of the al-Rawafed Security Company are kidnapped in Baghdad by people dressed as Iraqi Interior Ministry troops. Whistle blower in the Iraqi Health Ministry discloses that Shi'a pol.s ordered his ministry to stop tabulating Sunni deaths in the recent wave of killings in the country's twilight civil war. Also more bombings kill more innocents in the living nightmare created by the second Bush administration. * George W. Bush is saved from having to use the presidential veto by the withdrawal of Dubai Ports World from an agreement to manage 8 U.S. port facilities. March 9 * John Profumo dies at age 91. March 10 * Dutch Court convicts nine in connection with the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh. Those convicted include Mohammed Bouyeri (already serving a life sentence), Jason Walters (15 years), Ismael Aknikh (13 years) and Nouriddin el Fahtni (5 years). * Interior Secretary Gale Norton announces she will retire at the end of March. Knowing when to get off the ship before it sinks is an important political skill. * Black Republican, former deputy secretary of Health and Human Services, and recent second Bush adminsitration domestic policy advisor Claude Allen is arrested on retail theft charges. March 11 * Indicted war criminal Slobodan Milosevic dies in prison cell at Den Hague. * Peace activist Tom Fox is found dead in Baghdad. March 12 * Electoral Reform Demonstration in Dacca leads to arrests. * Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra refuses to debate his opponents live on television. Is this plutocratic arrogance or plain old fear? * Columbia conducts legislative elections. * El Salvador conducts parliamentary elections. * Yee-haa! Redneck wingnutfest in Memphis, TN. Republicans hold straw poll in Elvistown. Bill Frist comes in first ahead of Mitt Romney. George W. Bush and George Allen finish in third. McCain is the designated "moderate" loser. Giuliani doesn't even bother to attend. * Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold that he would introduce a resolution to censure George W. Bush: "The president has broken the law and, in some way, he must be held accountable." * Referendum opposing expansion of U.S. military base operations is approved by 87% of voters in Japanese city of Iwakuni, with a turnout of 58.6%. March 13 * Alabama cow tests positive for mad cow disease (BSE). March 14 * Senate Democrats wimp out on Feingold's gutsy censure motion. National Democratic Party leadeship still in desperate need of a spinal transplant. * Twilight sectarian civil war continues in Iraq as 87 bodies of death squad victims are discovered in locations around Baghdad. March 15 * Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra hints he may step down. * U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice attempts to make sense of U.S. foreign policy in Indonesia. * U.S. escalating troop deployments to Iraq as 700 more are redeployed from Kuwait to Iraq. March 16 * March 16-17: Operation Swarmer in Iraqi city of Samarra used to demonstrate that highly trained Iraqi army units are capable of boarding and unboarding U.S. flown helicopters. March 17 * Afternoon: Chanting "Villepin, you're toast" and "contract for slavery" 120,000 students march in Paris. March 18 * Violent Left Bank student protests. March 19 * Demonstrations around the world against the War in Iraq. 10,000 march in Poretland OR, 7000 march in Chicago, 1000 in New York, 2000 in Tokyo, 1000 in Seoul. * 1.5 million students and youth demonstrate in Fremch cities. Organized labor and student leaders threaten general strike in France unless Chirac government withdraws its anti-job security law. March 20 * Paul Tagliabue resigns as NFL commissioner. * Pres. George W. Bush gives speech to the City Club of Columbus, Ohio claiming success in his War in Iraq in the city of Tal Afar. March 21 * Protesters demanding the resignation of plutocrat Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra brings bsusiness to a halt in Bangkok's Silom Road. * Minor victory for free speech. Swedish Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds resigns because of her involvement in closing Internet site carrying cartoons showing the Prophet Muhammad. * Party primary elections held in Illinois as blizzard hits central part of the state. Governor Rod Blagojevich stomps primary challenger Chicago Alderman Edwin Eisendrath. State Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka barely defeats primary challenger Aurora business-type Jim Oberweis and Chicago business-type Ron Gidwitz. * Insurgent raid on Iraqi police station puts the lie to second Bush administration's claims that it is winning: 22 killed and 30 prisoners freed. March 22 * More evidence that Iraq is a quagmire. Second attack on Iraqi police station kills 4 in Madean, south of Baghdad. March 24 * Day for Latino Dignity protests punitive anti-Hispanic Georgia legislation. * More sectarian killings in Iraqi civil war. March 25 * Killing of 6 at a party in a Seattloe home remionds America of the price it pays for its "gun culture." * March 25-27: Pro-Immigration rallies in Los Angeles. 500,000 march in downtown Lose Angeles on Saturday, March 25! 40,000 high school students in school walk-out on Monday, March 27. March 26 * Afghani court drops capital charges of apostasy against Christian convert Abdul Rahman. Case exposed the hollowness of Afghanistan's "transitional democracy". * Police state repression of democracy demonstrations in Belarus. * Pro-democracy, anti-Thaksin demonstrators paralyze downtown Bangkok. March 27 * Stanislaw Lem dies in Krakow. * Ken Livingstone criticises U.S. Embassy in London for its 2005 decision not to pay the Congestion Charge. Livingstone comments that U.S. Ambassador Robert Tuttle "one of George Bush's closest cronies and a big funder of his election campaign" was trying to "skive out of (paying) like some chiselling little crook". March 28 * White House Chief of Staff Andy Card resigns with the second Bush adminsitration in a shambles. Replaced by Joshua B. Bolten, fresh from his impressive mismanagement of U.S. budgets as the White House budget director. * British Foreign Office releases foreign policy white paper Active Diplomacy for a Changing World. * National Strike in France to protest conservative dismantling of sucessful social programs. * 17th Knesset election in Israel with no major party promising peace. Decade after decade of vigorous government efforte devoted to nationl security and yet that's exactly what cannot be had. Centrist Kadima supplants Likud and Jabotinsky rolls over in his grave. * Caspar Weinberger dies. March 29 * Exiled Liberian president and oindicted war criminal Charles Tayor arrested in Nigeria while attempting to cross border into Cameroon. * President George W. Bush meets with President Vicente Fox and Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Cancun, Mexico. Bush is worried because the issues raised by large scale Mexican and other Latin American immigration is causing the Repubican Party national machine to fragment. March 30 * Scheduled meeting of Foreign Ministters in Germany to discuss Iranian nuclear proliferation. * Canadian soldier wounded by suicide bomber in Kandahar. * Kidnapped reporter Jill Carroll released. * Oil rises to $66 a barrel. * Gallup releases January to March 2006 poll figures indicating more Amercians describe themselves as Democrats (49%) than as Republicans (42%). Independents come in at 34%. * Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court rules that nonresident gays may not marry in Massachusetts. * Charles McArthur Emmanuel, a.k.a. Charles "Chuckie" Taylor Jr., a.k.a. son of former Liberian dictator Charles Taylor was arrested at Miami International Airport after flying in from Trinidad. March 31 * Underachiever U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice encounters "Go Home" anti-war protest in Blackburn, Jack Straw's "home town." * Boston Roman Catholic Archdiocese newspaper The Pilot fires photographer Peter Smith for taking photo of Justice Antonin Scalia performing rude Italian "don't care" chip flip. * University of Nebraska receives letter from the Nebraska office of the Deprtment of Homeland Security notifying it that its H-1B application for Bolivian academic Waskar Ali to teach as an assistant professor in the departments of history and ethnic studies is undergoing security checks and is awaiting review and clearance. April April * U.S. President George W. Bush's "Positive Rating" is 35%. April 1 * U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is confronted with protesters peace and human rights everywhere she turns in Britain. April 2 * Bullwinkle says: "Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat." Rocky responds: "That trick never works." Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and British Foreign Minister Jack Straw pay a surprise visit to Baghdad in what has become a very tired neocon gambit, with the appearance of activity offered as a substitute for real results. * 54% of French respondents poll vocie support for student groups and labor unions against the First Jobs Contract (CPE) law the conservative Gaullist government is attempting to impose on an unwillign populace. * Republican presidential hopeful John McCain performs embarrassing pathetic on-air flip-flip on NBC's Meet the Press by saying that the Christian Right has a major role to play in the Republican Party. Defending his about-face McCain says, "I think most Americans will judge me by my entire record." He may find that is true. * Parliamentary election in Thailand alcks legitimacy. Snap election was called by plutocratic Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra on February 24. Thaksin wins but against an opposition that has boycotted the election. April 4 * British double agent in the Provisional IRA, Denis Donaldson is killed. * 22 Wisconsin towns and villages vote for pull-out in anti-Iraq war referenda. 68% of Madison WI votes for pulloutand 75% of Hayward WI votes for pullout. * Tom DeLay lets it be known publicly that he wil be stepping down as Republican candidate for Texas's 22nd Congressional District seat. Does he imagine that he hears the gavel coming down on the hammer? His future plans include avoiding prison and joining Next Gingrich and other Washington insiders as a lobbyist. * Fox News Channel "Dayside" archors are too discombobulated by live video feed of massive protests in Paris that they can't focus on the task of explaining away Tom DeLay's cowardly conservative flight from the possibility of losing the TX-22 to a Democrat. The usual rhetoric of sneering arrogance and prissy superiority fails them as they quiver before the image a people in revolt! * Massachusetts State House votes 154 to 2 and State Senate votes 37 to 0 to require that nearly all state residents have health insurance. April 5 * National Tomb Sweeping Day in Taiwan. * Georgia Republican Phil Gingrey uses the absurdly Orwellian "plussed-up" to describe increased government spending by the Republican Congressional majority. April 6 * Georgia Representative Cynthia McKinney apologises for striking a Capital Police officer with her cell phone in an altercation. * Second Bush administration loses last drop of credibility whn it is learned that the White House authorized selective leaking of information by Scooter Libby to reporters. April 7 * Republican majority in U.S. Senate fails to pass new immigration legislation, perhaps a lost opportunity in what Sen. Bill Frist sees as his road to the White House in 2008. * April * April 7: Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi describes his supporters an "army of freedom" in a general election campaign. What about a "March on Rome?" * National Union legisltor Mario Pivaral is assassinated in Guatemala City. * Suicide bombing at the Sh'ia Buratha mosque in northern Baghdad kills 79 people and wounds 160. April 8 * Bombing at Sh'ia shrine kills 4 and wounds 15. * Two al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades militants killed in Israeli air strike in eastern Gaza City. * Campaigning is suspended in the pre-election day of reflection in Italy. April 9 * Italy conducts parliamentary elections. * Pathological cycle of violence between Israelis and Palestinians continues as Hamas vows to avenge deaths of 15 killed by Israeli air strikes over the weekend. * Immigrant Rights Protests in San Antanio and Miami. April 10 * Immigrant Rights Protests in Washington, DC and New York. * French President Chirac and Prime Minister de Villepin cave to massive popular street protests and withdraw the proposed CPE legislation. April 11 * Election returns relased showing that the Center-Left Party Coalition of Romano Prodi defeated Rightist Coalition of Silvio Berlusconi. Megalomanical billionaire Berlusconi pouts in an unmanly fashion. * LCN kingpin Bernardo Provenzano finally arrested in Corleone. * Immigrant Rights Protests in California: Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Oxnard, Santa Maria, Santa Barbara, San Diego, Bakersfield, Fresno and Sacramento. * British Labour Party MP Gerald Kaufman called for trials either in Britain or before an international tribunal for those accused of killing International Solidarity Movement activist Tom Hurndall and filmmaker James Miller in 2003. Economic sanctions against Israel may be necessary unless the Israeli Army perps are put on trial. * Premature ejaculation in Tehran as Iranian president claims that his country has joined the nulcear club. * Shi'a Islamist Suicide bombing kills 57 in Suuni prayer meeting in Karachi, Pakistan. * Soccer mom Francine Busby advances to Democratic Party Primary Run-off Election in the 50th Congressional District in California to fill the seat formerly held by military hero, antique collector, bribe taker, tax cheat, and all around disgraced Republican Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunnignham. April 12 * "Conscience of the Country" Rev. William Sloan Coffin dies in Strafford, Vermont. Helped to end Vietnam War. April 13 * Courage in the face of militarism: British Royal Air Force doctor Flight Lieutenant Malcolm Kendall sentenced to 8 months imprisonment after being found guilty by a court martial of refusing deployment in War in Iraq. April 14 * President George W. Bush says of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld: "He has my full support and deepest appreciation." Meanwhile several more American troops are killed and many more Iraqis troops and civilians are killed in the Iraqi civil war. * April 14-16: Sectarian violence in Alexandria between Coptic Orthodox Chritians and Sunni Muslims. April 16 * Republicans circle the wagons to defend their boss's boss. Example: Kentucky Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell defends Donald rumsfeld on Fox News Sunday. April 17 * Suicide-bomber kills 6 and wounds dozens in Tel Aviv. Islamic Jihad claims responsibility. * Bombing in Istanbul. * Tamil Tigers suspend negotiations with Sri Lankan government; mines kill 8. April 18 * Failed President George W. Bush insists that failed Secretary of Defense will keep his job. Well at least until Dick Cheney changes his mind. * Purdue University graduate student Vikram Buddhi arrested for allegedly posting threat to kill Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld on an online message board. * Gutsy Arizona Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano vetoes bill criminalizing the presence of illegal immigrants in the state. April 19 * April 19-20: Two day sit-in by protesting students at Florida Governor Jeb Bush's office forces the smarter sibling to met with parents of 14 year old beaten to death in a juvenile "boot camp." April 20 * Chinese President Hu Jintao visits U.S. President George W. Bush in Washington DC; Hu encounters angry Falun Gong heckler at ceremony but CNN coverage of the moment is censored in China. April 21 * CIA fires unnamed whistle-blower who revelaed existence of secret prisons. Other sources reveal the hero is Mary McCarthy. See Secret Prisons Timeline. April 22 * Incumbent Mayor Ray Nagin takes 38% of the vote in race for Mayor of New Orleans, not enough to avoid a run-off with Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, who took 28% of the vote. April 23 * Shi'a politician Jawad al-Maliki selected as Prime Minister. The war continues. April 26 * Further evidence for the decline of American democracy. Fox News/conservative commentator Tony Snow replaces the pathetic Scott McClellan as White House flack catcher. * Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Sec. of State Condoleeza Rice visit Baghdad looking for positive images, messages or anything else to convince the easily gulled that the Iraq in Iraq isn't a total debacle. April 27 * Sister and brother of newly appointed Iraqi VP Tariq al-Hashemi are assassinated. * Snoop Dogg is arrested at Heathrow when his entourage verbally abuse and push police officers. * Republican Senator Susan Collins and almost Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman endorse scrapping FEMA and recreating new agency within the Department of Homeland Security. FEMA's flaws had been fixed during the Clinton adminsitration but were reinvented in the second Bush administration. * Protests in Sofia, Bulgaria against visit of U.S. Sec. of State Condoleeza Rice. April 28 * NY Gov. George Pataki comments that the U.S. major party presidential nominating process should remain exactly as it is, with Iowa's caucuses first, followed by New Hampshire's presidential primary. (Otherwise his staff will have to re-plan his 2008 campaign.) May May * U.S. President George W. Bush's "Positive Rating" is only 29%. May 1 * Immigrants and their allies in the United States will engage in a one-day boycott to protest xenophobic populism. May 6 * Director of CIA Porter Goss resigns after being forced out by Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte. Former NSA Director and Air Force General Michael Hayden is instantly floated as possible/likely replacement. * Rhode Island Democratic Rep. Patrick Kennedy enters alcohol and substance rehab in the wake of a car crash in Washington, DC. * Facade democracy holds facade democratic election: Singapore PM Lee Hsien Loong's People's Action Party takes 82 of 84 parliamentary seats in general election, including 37 uncontested seats. * Helicopter crash in Afghanistan kills 10 American troops. * Helicopter shot down near Basra kills 5 British troops, Shi'a Iraqis cheer and throw stones at their "liberators." May 7 * Four car bombings in Baghdad kill 17, wound 44; 48 bodies found executed with shots to the back of the head. May 8 * Republican House of Representatives Intelligence Committee Chair Pete Hoekstra dares to challenge the second Bush administration's choice of Air Force General Michael Hayden as the replacement DCIA, arguing that a civilian should head a civilian intelligence agency. May 9 * Another Michigan Republican U.S. Representative, Deputy Party Whip Mike Rogers, also screws up the courage to challenge the White House on the Hayden nomination. * UN General Assembly elected the 47 member states of the new Human Rights Council. May 10 * Italian Communist Party Senator Giorgio Napolitano is elected President of Italy by a electoral college of 1100 Grand Electors: 630 members of the House of Delegates, 322 members of the Senate and 58 regional delegates. * France Commemorates the Abolition of Slavery. * Cingular Wireless withdraws racist "La Migra" ringtone. May 11 * Kentucky Republican Gov. Ernie Fletcher for engaging in crude patronage politics. * USA Today Leslie Cauley reports that massive scale of NSA telephone surveillance program. * Heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson dies at age 71. May 12 * CNN Live Today anchor Daryn Kagen rhetorically reduces the NSA Telephone Survellance Scandal to the "NSA Phone Flap." Who needs jouurnalistic integrity when you have the love of Rush Limbaugh and the White House? * FBI searches home and offcie of Kyle Dustin Foggo. May 13 * Parliamentary Election in Fiji. May 14 * Iraqi insugents shoot down U.S. helicopter south of Baghdad; wekend U.S. military death toll is 7. May 15 * Hysterical Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions releases Heritage Foundation "analysis" claiming that 217 million legal immigrants would flood the U.S. if proposed immigration reform legislation is passed. * Pres. George W. Bush maskes Oval Office speech announcing decision to use up to 6000 of th already overstretched National Guard to police more of the U.S.-Mexican border for one year. * EY Foreign Ministers meeting in Brussels offer Serbia an incentive (closing preliminary EU integration negotiations) to arrest fugitive indicted war criminal Ratko Mladic. May 16 * One month after winning the Italian general election, Romano Prodi is finally asked to form a new coalition government. * Venezuelan government offial suggests selling his country's 21 F-16s to Iran or China. May 17 * Suicide-bombing in Russian Ingushtia kills 7. * Islamist terrorist shoots 5 in Ankara courtroom. * Al Gore's global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth premiers. * May 16-22: Combat rages across southern Afghani provinces. Over 100 killed, inlcuding one Canadian soldier, one U.S. soldier, two French soldiers one American State Dept. drug agent. Taliban resurgent in what might be renamed Quagmire 1. May 18 * DCIA nominee Michael Hayden appeasr before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. He asserts that the NSA's universal domestic surveillance conducted without warrants is totally legal; also reassures the committee members that white is black and black is white. * 15,000 join demonstration march in Istanbul to protest May 17 Islamist terror against judiciary. * New Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi promises to pull Italian troops out of the neo-conservative quagmire in Iraq. May 19 * Gun battle between Hamas and Fatah in Gaza City. * Former Pres. George H.W. Bush and wife Barbara Bush hold Chevy Chase fundraiser for Maryland Lt. Gov. and Republican U.S. Senatorial candidate Michael S. Steele. * [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0382625/ Da Vinci Code] appears in theaters. See l'Hotel de Ville May 20 * Incumbent New Orleans Mayor Democrat Ray Nagin defeats challenger Democratic Louisiana Lt. Governor Mitch Landrieu 59,460 votes (52,3%), to 54,131 votes (47.7%) * Barry Bonds hits his 714th home-run. May 22 * U.S. air strike kills 50 in Afghani Kandahari village of Azizi. * Cooling tower of the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant in Kalama, OR is demolished. See Boondoggle. * British P.M. Tony Blair is in Baghdad. * FBI releases 83-page FBI affidavit alleging Louisiana Democratic Rep. William Jefferson was caught on video taking a certificate for a 30 percent stake in a Nigerian company in exchange for using his political influence. May 23 * Israeli Army arrests Hamas commander Ibrahim Hamed. May 24 * Canadian newspaper National Post apologises for false story that Iran was requring non-Muslims to wear distinctive cloth patches a la Nazi Germany. * Constitutional crisis in the U.S.? Republican and Democratic leaderships in the U.S. House of Representatives demand that the Justice Department immediately return any material obtained during police raid of Democratic Rep. William Jefferson's House congressional office. May 25 * Australia intervenes in East Timor. Malaysian troops scheuled to join Australian troops. * No one ever expects the Spanish Inquisition! U.S. Pres. George W. Bush orders records seized in FBI raid on Congressional office of Dem. Rep. William Jefferson sealed for 45 days in response to objections from the entire leadership of the U.S. Hosue. Justice Department retaliates by leaks that it is investigating Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives Dennis Hastert. How dare he challenge the power of Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez. Beware of the priestly Gonzalez. He has legal memoranda justifying torture of enemies of the state! * During press conference U.S. Pres. George W. Buah and British Prime Minister Tony Blair admit minor "mistakes" with their imperialist adventure in Iraq. Bush thinks his mistakes were mostly rhetorical in nature. * Reggae genius Desmond Dekker dies in Surrey, England. May 26 * U.S. Senate confirms Gen. Michael Hayden as DCIA. Most Democrats cave and vote to confirm Hayden. Arlen Specter, Judiciary Committee Chair, demosntrates some moxey by being is the sole Republican Senator to vote against Hayden. * Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling have been convicted of the fraud that destroyed Enron. May 27 * U.S. Pres. George W. Bush delivers West Point commencement speech, notes that, "West Point has expanded Arabic language training, has hired new faculty with expertise in Islamic law and culture...". Guess where the U.S. military will be fighting again in the future? May 29 * Crude oil reaches $71 a barrel. May 30 * U.S. troops in Iraq is receive "values" indoctrination following revelations of the mass murder of civilians in al-Haditha. See Haditha Atrocity. * Large anti-Iraq War protest at Port of Olympia, Washington: 22 arrested. * 600,000 take to the streets in nationwide strike by Chilean secondary school students. * Bulgarian Confederation of Independent Unions leads 10,00 marchers in protest in Sofia. June June * U.S. President George W. Bush's "Positive Rating" is only 33%. June 1 * Bombing in eastern Istanbul injures 14. June 2 * Anti-terror raid in London, 2 Bangladeshi suspects arrested, 1 wounded. * Anti-terror raids in Toronto, 17 arrested and 3 tons of ammonium nitrate confiscated. * Iraqi gov't of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki rejects U.S. conclusion that U.S. troops dod not execute a family in Ishaqi and hide the evidence with an air strike. * Sgt. Santos Cardona is convicted for abusing Abu Ghraib detainees and sentenced to demotion to specialist, serve 90 days at hard labor and forfeit $7,200 in pay. * Prosecutor Gen. Vladimir Ustinov, a Yeltsin appointee, resigns as Russia's top prosecutor. June 3 * Suicide bombing in Basra kills 28, wounds 62. Remians of 12 more found, including 8 severed heads. Iraqi "democrats" still haven't formed a coailtion government. * 17 Canadians, including 5 minors charged in Missassauga Toronto bomb plot. June 4 * Pres. George W. Bush and Sen. Bill Frist desperately try to revive gay marriage as an issue to re-mobilize the Republican base despirited about the Iraqi quagmire, Federal deficit, flat income growth and Republican corruption. June 5 * The Islamist militia Islamic Courts Union led by Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys announces that it controls Modadishu, Somalia. * U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy released from a drug rehab program. June 6 * Predicted millennial end of the world does not occur. Just more of the same human created joy and misery. * Morer details of Islamist terror plot in Toronto exposed: hostage taking, impossible demands, beheading. * Low voter turnout, below 34%, in California primary and special elections. June 7 * Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki orders release of 594 prisoners. * 6.15 pm: U.S. air strike on an isolated safe house in northern Baghdad kills Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. June 8 * NATO agrees to increase its troop deployments in Afghanistan from 9,000 to 17,000 in reponse to resurgent Taliban. * U.S. Ambassador and verbal bully-boy John Bolton threatened UN Sec. Gen. Kofi Anan with "consequences" unless he publicly repudiates criticism of America's foreign policy made in a June 6 speech at Turtle Bay by Mark Malloch Brown, the UN's second hgihest ranking officer. Bolton complained that the speech was condescending and patronizing toward Americans. Apparently only Americans may be condescending and patronizing to others, at least when they not busy screaming orders. * Centers for Disease Control reveals urvey findings that contemporary teenagers are less likely to smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol or have sex than their peers 15 years ago. They are also suspected of being more willing to lie to pollsters from the Centers of Disease Control. June 9 * More war between two democracies as Israeli Navy shells Gaza Strip. Isreal may not be able to defeat the Palestinians but it is effectively destroying the Kantian Peace as an idea. June 22 * FBI arrests 7 Islamists in Miami on suspicion of planning terrorist attacks against federal buildings in the city and the Sears Tower in Chicago. * U.S. Senate votes 86 to 13 to defeat amendment by Senators John Kerry and Russ Feingold requiring U.S. troops be withdrawn from Iraq by July 1, 2007. June 24 * Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki offers amnesty to insurgents. * BBC fails to report Stop Torture demonstration at Edinburgh Airport. June 28 * Democratic Israel prepares to invade Gaza in democratic Palestine. Isreali aircraft "buzz" Damascus, Syria and Israel threatnes to bomb its neighbor. * June 29: London-based newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi runs front-page commentary that Israel is expected to carry out new massacres against the Palestinians in Gaza. June 29 * U.S. Supreme Court votes 5 to 3 against the second Bush administration in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. June 30 * Osama bin Laden (who is still at large) issues new audio tape vowing al-Qaeda will continue the fight against the U.S. and its allies 'everywhere'. bin Laden's message to GW Bush: "We will keep up our fight to bleed your money dry, kill your men and so that (your forces) go home defeated, as we defeated you in Somalia." July July * U.S. President George W. Bush's "Positive Rating" is 34%. July 1 * NASA Shuttle flight is delayed due to weather. July 2 * Mexico conducts presidential and legislative elections. High voter turnout (~60%) in a close race. July 3 * Apollo asteroid 2004 XP14 crosses Earth orbit. * U.N. delegation meets the new Somali Islamist regime leadership. Taliban are also resurgent in Afghanistan. Has the second Bush adminsitration lost the War on Terror because the neo-cons insisted on inading Iraq? July 4 July 5 * Israel expands military operations in Gaza, re-occupying three illegal settlements and killing on Palestinian in a shoot-out. The utopian dream of the original Zionists has become a nightmare of unending war. * Car-bomb attack on Iranian Shi's pilgrims in Kufa, Iraq and the shrine of Maitham al-Tamar kills 10 and wounds 40. July 6 * Terrorist plot to blow up the Holland Tunnel foiled by the FBI. Prime suspect Assem Hammoud is in custody in Lebanon and facing criminal charges. * Confirmation of the PAN presidential candidate is confirmed as winner of the Mexican presidential election is challenged. July 7 July 8 July 9 * Sectarian civil war rages in Baghdad as Shi'a gunmen kill 40 plus Sunnis at random. * Italy defeats France to win the FIFA World Cup. * Canadian soldier killed to firefight in Afghanistan, the 17th to die. * Michigan Republican Rep. Peter Hoekstra whines that he wasn't briefed on a major intelligence operation on Fox News. Maybe now he knows what the rest of America is feeling. July 10 * Democratic Israel conducts air strike on the territory of democratic Palestine. * Is it weird nepotism or just a langauge with too few vowels? Polish President Lech Marcinkiewicz forces Polish Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz to resign so that Lech's brother, conservative leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, may take his place. * Continuing sectarian civil war in Iraq with 2 bombings in Shi'a eastern Talbiya district in Baghdad. Bombings and shopoting kill at least 40. * 41 year old Chechen guerrila leader Shamil Basayev killed in successful Russian air strike. July 11 * Fresh victory for the Islamist terrorists in Somalia as U.S. backed warlord Abdi Awale Qaybdiid surrenders. * Kashmiri Islamists bomb Mumbai commuter trains killing 183 and wounding 770. CNN "journalists" struggle to explain where Mumbai is and why it is important. July 12 * BrainGate brain implant Nature cover story. * U.S. tax dollars at work. Democratic Israel conducts air strikes on Beirut, capital of democratic Lebanon. Kantian Peace dead, dead, dead. Israeli Navy blockades Lebanese coast. CNN and Fox News compete to see who can present the most pro-Israeli slant on news coverage. 40 plus killed. July 13 * Democratic Israel conducts more air strikes against democratic Lebanon. CNN and Fox News continue fierce competition to see who can present the most pro-Israeli slant on news coverage. Criticism of Israeli miltiary aggression is Verboten! * Valerie Plame brings civil action against U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and repulsive neo-con Scooter Libby. * U.S. House of Representatives votes 390 to 33 to renew the 1965 Voter Rights Act for another 25 years. All the "no" votes came from Republicans, who depend on a white conservative Protestant voting bloc in the Southeast. July 14 * Bastille Day. * Democratic Israel conducts more air strikes against democratic Lebanon. CNN and Fox News continue fierce competition to see who can present the most pro-Israeli slant on news coverage. July 15 * CNN describes Israeli-Lebanese War as a "deepening crisis." CNN stops referring to the capture of Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah as "kidnappings" and starts calling them captures. * Death toll in Isareli-Lebanese War rises. Israeli airstrike on minibus kills 20 civilians. Hezbollah hits Israeli gunboat with sophisticed missile, kills 4. * St. Petersburg G8 Summit pre-game: Bush refuses to urge Israeli restraint, Putin criticizes Israel. * U.S. urges 25,000 Americans to leave Lebanon, deepening political crisis. Does not urge Americans to leave Israel. * High profile second Bush administration Black Republican kills his son and then himself with a handgun. Assistant Secretary of Commerce from 2001-2005 and conservative George Mason University law professor William H. Lash III, 45, holes up in his Cape Code home and kills his autistic 12 year old son before turning the gun on himself. July 16 * CNN devotes vast amoujnts of air time to reporting the Israeli-Lebanese War from the Israeli perspective. Americans in Lebanon are made the exclsuive focus of concern about the Israeli aerial bombardment. All other Lebanese lives are thus devalued in the news coverage. * Israeli aircraft shot down over Beirut. July 17 * Pathetic CNN agrees to voluntarily censor its own photos and video feed from Israel. * G-8 leaders in St. Petersburg cannot agree about a response to the Israeli-Lebanese War. * E.U., U.S., Brazilian, Japanese, Indian and Australian tarde minsisters meet in Geneva with World Trade Organisation (WTO) chief Pascal Lamy in a bid to rescue the failing Doha Round. July 18 * Los Angeles Times reports that the Internal Revenue Service is warning churches and nonprofit organizations that improper campaigning in the upcoming political season could endanger their tax-exempt status under the Political Activity Compliance Initiative. * Democrats on the House Government Reform Committee issue report shoping that Women who consult pregnancy resource centers often receive misleading information that exaggerate the health risks associated with having an abortion: increased risks of cancer, infertility and stress disorders. * Fox News and CNN cooperate with Newt Gingrich as he attempts to revive his political career with fatuous hyperbole about the Israeli-Lebanese War being the start of World War III. * European allies evacuate thousands of their nationals from Lebanon before the U.S. can evacuate even hundreds of American nationals. * Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales forced to confess to Senate Judiciary Committee that Pres. George W. Bush personally ordered that the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) be denied appropriate security clearances. Is Gonzalez old enough to remember the fate of Nixon Atty. Gen. John Mitchell? * Eight day of Israeli attacks on Lebanon. 500,000 Lebanese, one-eighth of the entire population, have been made refugees. * Pres. George W. Bush vetoes stem cell research legislation because he respects human life; frozen fertilized human egg life, not the viable Iraqi, Palestinian or Lebanese human variety. July 19 * Ninth day of Isreali attacks on Lebanon. July 20 * Tenth day of Israeli attacks on Lebanon. CNN ideological self-censorship: reporters cannot say directly that the bombs falling from the sky on the Lebanese and endangering 25,000 American citizens in Lebanon are from Israeli jets. Maybe the bombs are being dropped by the bomb fairies? July 21 * Khmer Rouge war criminal Ta Mok cheats justice by dying of old age before his trial. * Israel rejects UN call for a ceasefire. Increasing discussions of another Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Second Bush administration dithers, simply pleased the U.S. public is not paying attention to its bloody mess in Iraq. July 22 * More Israeli military units cross border into Lebanon. CNN continues to cover war as if the deaths of 345 Lebanese civilains are the result of an abstraction called "conflict" rather than from Israeli air attacks. July 23 * More reports of Israeli airstrikes on Lebanese civilian vehicles fleeing southern Lebanon as ordered in Israeli aerial leaflets. * U.S. Secretary of State Condolleeza Rice in slow motion pantomime of Middle East diplomacy while democratic Lebanon is bombed by democratic Israel. * WTO Global Trade negotiations collapse in Geneva. July 24 * Bill Clinton and Arianna Huffington endorse Joe Lieberman for Senate in the Democratic Party Primary in Waterbury, Connecticut rally. But what if Little Joe loses to True Blue Ned Lamont and runs as an independent/spoiler in the General Election? Clinton didn't specify but the message was clear. Clinton describes the War in Iraq as the "pink elephant in the living room." * Isreali bomdment of Beirut and Tyre resumes after 24 hour lull. Fox News Anchor Gretchen Carlson describes the sitaution in Beirut as "fluid" (10:00 ET). Was that a euphemism for "bloody?" Fox News continues to report each Israeli death but not each of the 10 times as many Lebanese deaths; for American conservatives some innocent human lives are worth a lot more than more than other innocent human lives. CNN military expert Maj. Gen. Don Sheppard (ret.) says tells audience that "war is terrible" and an "ugly and terrible thing." What deep insight from one gets from the trained military mind! * U.S. Secretary of State Condolleeza Rice met with protests in the West Bank. * Democratic Illinois Representative Jan Schakowsky and other Congressional Democrats try to out-Zionist the Republicans by asking Republican Speaker of the House Denny Hastert to withdraw invitiation to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to speak to the House because the Iraqi Shi'a fundamentalist leader critized the israeli atatck on Israel. July 25 * U.S. Secretary of State Condolleeza Rice visits Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to congratulate him: "It is time for a new Middle East," she said. "It is time to say to those that don't want a different kind of Middle East that we will prevail. They will not." Only a neo-conservative or a psychopath could see the bloody chaos in Lebanon as progress. * Israeli aerial bombardment of Lebanon continues. Hizbollah continues rocket bombardment of northern Israel. July 26 * Last day of Saddam Hussein's pathetic trial. His defense counsel continue boycott of the proceedings that began in June because of the killing of Khamis al-Obeidi, the third defense attorney killed since trial began in October, 2005. * Israeli aerial bombardment of Lebanon continues. Hizbollah continues rocket bombardment of northern Israel. July 27 July 28 * Counting casualties in the Israeli-Lebanese War (CNN still insists on calling it a "Crisis"). Lebanese Health Minister Muhammed Jawad Khalifeh said 382 civilians were confirmed killed and another 200 plus either known to be buried under the rubble of buildings or missing. Some 55 Lebanese soldiers are dead. The Israeli dead include 19 civilians and 33 soldiers. Israeli government has followed the Bush example of painting itself into a corner with a high risk strategy and no exit decent option. The Lebanese were not supposed to fight on the ground well or become more united politically. Large scale mobilization of Israeli reservists. * Poor pathetic British Prime Minister Tony Blair arrives in Washington. * Somali Constitution and Federalism Minister Abdallah Deerow Isaq assassinated as he leaves Friday prayers. * Courageous Chicago City Council votes to raise the minimum wage for big box retailers in the city. Living Wage = $10 an hour plus $3 hour in benefits. * Republican controled Congress sukered by the Republican executive branch once again. Democratic Representatives Ellen Tauscher, Ed Markey and Barbara Lee send letter to U.S. State Department's Inspector General demanding investigation for the delay in disclosing sanctions aginst two Indian firms for doing business with Iran until after a vote on the 2006 U.S.-Indian Nuclear Agreement. July 29 * One dead and 5 wounded in shooting at the Seattle Jewish Federation. July 30 * Israeli airstike in the southern Lebanese town of Qana kills 60 plus civilians, including 30 children sparks international outrage. U.S. Secretary of State Condolleeza Rice is "dis-invited" to Beirut by Lebanese government and she scrambles to persuade Israelis to suspend airstrikes but not artillery and ground attacks in southern Lebanon. * July 30-31: Congo holds general election with comparatively little violence, excepting the civil war in the east. Outcome inevitably malapportioned because the 500 National Assembly seats were allocated according to the number of registered voters rather than population. July 31 * Australian Prime Minister John Howard will lead his party into a fifth general election in hopes of winning a fifth term. Peter Costello must wait in the wings a while longer. August August 1 * Israeli ground invasion of Lebanon advances toward the Litani River. Have they achieved quagmire yet? * First day of the Iraqi government's new security plan leaves 55 dead in bombings and shootings, including at least 23 Iraqi soldiers. Also a mass kidnaping by people dressed as Iraqi police. Looks like yet another spectacular failure from the Keystone Kops of Foreign Policy, the neoconservatives in the second Bush administration. * Wingnut Cuban Exiles in U.S. celebrate intestinal illness of Fidel Castro. Plans made to celebrate but not emigrate to a post-communist Cuba. August 2 * Daring helicopter Israeli commando raid on Baalbek captures 11 unimportant Hezbollah members. Hezbollah responds with barrage of 200 rockets, the largest number yet in the war. * FLIP-FLOP, FLIP-FLOP: Hawkish "Democratic" CT Senator Joe Lieberman now says that he was always critical of the way that the second Bush administration was executing tghe Quagmire in Iraq. Daily News * U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld says his tight schedule prevents appearance at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the Iraq Quagmire he co-authored. Was it neo-conservative arrogance ot just fear of a grilling about his incompetence? August 3 * FLIP-FLOP, FLIP-FLOP: U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld changes his mind about appearing at the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on his Iraq Quagmire. Better late than never: Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton questions Rumsfeld sharply. Republican Missouri Senator Jim Talent submits his entry in the category Most Obsequious Suck-Up Question to a Political Appointee of the Same Party by a Committee Member. * New Israeli air strikes into northern Lebanon. * Marine Corps shamed. Six U.S. Marines charged with assault on civilians in Hamdania, Iraq: Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins III, Cpl. Trent Thomas and Lance Cpl. Jerry Shumate Jr., Lance Cpl. Saul Lopezromo, Pfc. Derek Lewis and Lance Cpl. Henry Lever. Hutchins, Thomas and Shumate are already charged with murder. * Taliban attacks in and around Kandahar kill 23 Afghani civilians and 4 Canadian soldiers. 10 More canadians wounded. August 4 * More Taliban I.E.D. attacks against Canadiant troops. * 100,000 plus Iraqi Shi'a in Baghdad march in support of Hezbollah. Uniformed members of Sadr's Mehdi Army carrying arms openly protect bystanders and demonstrators. * Carl J. Truscott, John Ashcroft's appointee as Director of the BATF, resigned after complaints that he had spent too much money on the agency's new HQ in Washington DC. What is a Republican appointed BATF Director supposed to do, try to control gun crime? Truscott was only being rational in spending like a conservative rather than alienating all those bug-eyed gun nuts who vote Republican. * Republican National Committee chairperson Ken Mehlman claims Democrats are weak on terrorism. August 5 * 25th day of the Israeli-Lebanese War, which is described as the Hezbollah-Israeli War in the crawl under CNN with Wolf Blitzer. Pro-Israeli bias prevents CNN from naming the war accurately. August 6 * 26th day of Israeli-Lebanese War. Speaker of the Lebanese Parliament Nabih Berri says Lebanese government would reject any ceasefire that leaves Israel occupying Lebanese sovereign territory. Rocket kills 12 Israeli soldiers at Kiryat Shmona kibbutz. CNN and Fox News coverage emphasises that they are "reservists" to increase the identification of U.S. television audiences with the soldiers in the Israeli war effort. * Arab League ministers arrive in Beirut amid Israeli aerial bombardment of the city. August 7 * Fifteen (ethnic Tamil) aid workers (11 men and 4 women) in (French) Action Against Hunger are executed by shooting in Muttur, Sri Lanka. The pro-Tamil Tiger TamilNet Web-site reports that 15 Tamil civilians were killed by Sri Lankan Army artillery fire. August 8 * Israel issues "No Drive" Decree for southern Lebanon. Any vehicle on the roads in the south will be targeted for air stikes. Maj. Gen. Moshe Kaplinksi replaces Maj. Gen. Udi Adam as Northern Front commander by Israeli High Command. * Political violence in Iraq claims 33 lives, with 3 bombings at the Interior Ministry in Baghdad. * Challenger Ned Lamont defeats incumbent Joe Lieberman in Connecticut Democratic Party Primary Election for Senate by mobilizing a massive grass roots Democratic base against the big money campaign of the Republican collaborator. Lieberman shows his true colors with a "non-concession" concession speech. His upbeat tone suggests a disengagement from reality, perhaps the result of being excessively close to the second Bush administration. * Incumbent Cythnia McKinney is defeated by challenger Hank Johnson Georgia Democratic Party U.S. House run-off election. The defeat appears largely self-inflicted. Pro-choice incumbent Republican Joe Schwartz is defeated by anti-abortion Republican Tim Walberg in Michigan. The "big tent" of the Republican Party just keeps on shrinking. * News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire are arrested on suspicion of phone hacking. August 9 * Tamil Tigers blow up ambulance with claymore mine near Nedunkerny, Srilanka killing a doctor, his wife, two nurses and the ambulance driver. * The Indian state of Kerala banned Coca-Cola and PepsiCo products in response to concerns about pesticide residues. * Scotland Yard and Metropolitan Police foil large scale trans-Atlantic bombing plot, arresting 21 in the sort of old fashioned civilian police work that is the most successful policy on terrorism. Five more suspects reportedly still at large. The British authorities are forced to act before they can round up a second group of terrorists because U.S. authorities have pressured the Pakistani-British Rasid Rauf. British counter-terrorism sources report that this counter-terrorism failure is due to American focus on short term success. * Sugarland, Texas Mayor David Wallace announced he will enter race as a Republican write-in candidate for Tom DeLay's Texas seat. * America loses a real hero: James A. Van Allen dies at age 91 in Iowa City, Iowa. August 10 * Bombing of Shi'a shrine in Najaf, Iraq kills 30. * News that passengers flying from U.S. airports will be deprived of various fluilds and gels (water, coffee, shampoo etc.) drives most of news coverage of the Isreali-Lebanese War from television screens. The annoyance of American airline passengers is deemed more important than the deaths of Lebanese and Israelis. Israeli aerial bombardment extends farther north into Lebanon. August 11 * Some news coverage the Israeli-Lebanese War returns but CNN still refers to it as the Middle East Crisis. * Massachusetts Republican Governor Mitt Romney cancels political trip to Wisconsin to exploit public anxiety about terrorism. Cheap posturing earns him national press attention crucial for his 2008 presidential bid. * UN Security Council votes unanimously to approve Resolution 1701 ceasefire agreement for the Israeli-Lebanese War. * U.S. President George W. Bush's "Positive Rating" is only 34%. August 12 * Lebanese government approves the UN Resolution 1701 ceasefire agreeement. August 13 * Isreali-Lebanese war rages on despite the impending ceasefire. Israeli Cabinet votes 24 to 0, with 1 abstention to approve UN Resolution 1701 ceasefire agreement. CNN contnues to describe the Israeli-Lebanese War as the "Crisis in the Middle East." * Hugo Chavez visits the ailing Fidel Castro on his 80th birthday. August 14 * First day of the ceasefire agreement in the Lebanese-Israeli War. Ceasefire will hold for four days before a significant violation on August 18. * Nigerian Army withdraws from the formerly disputed Bakassi Peninsula (Island), which was awarded to Cameroon ny the International Court of Justice. The territory will remain under Nigerian civil administration for the next two years. August 15 * Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi fulfills five-year-old pledge to visit Yasukuni shrine on the anniversary of the end of the Second World War, a bone thrown to Japanese wingnuts and red meat to Chinese nationalists. * Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund and the American Civil Liberties Union bring action against Hazleton, Pennsylvania. Town Mayor Lou Barletta is a proponent of the Illegal Immigration Relief Act Ordinance. Ironically, a century ago Italian immigrants were subject to narrow minded small town bigotry. * Sounding like a true conservative at an immigration field hearing in Ganinesville, GA, Republican U.S. Rep. Charlies Norwood demanded, "What I wanted was witnesses who agree with me, not disagree with me." (How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?) * Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi Jun'ichiro visits Yasukuni Shrine. August 16 August 17 August 18 * Israel government demonstrates contempt for the UN and international law by breaking the ceasefire agreement to conduct a raid in the village of Boudai in the Bekaa Valley. An IDF officer is killed in the raid. * Lebanese Army forces begin deployment into southern Lebanon. August 19 * Dining with accused war criminal? Connecticutt's Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Ned Lamont attends dinner in New York with Israel Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres. * Cindy Sheehan is among 50 demonstrators chanting "Try Rove for Treason" at Associated Republicans of Texas dinner at the Renaissance Austin Hotel. Ticket prices began at $200 per person, estimated $250,000 raised. * California Rice Commission announces that the Japanese ban on the herbicide resistant genetically modified Southern long grain rice does not affect most of the California crop. * What is the best way to punish demonstrations of courage? That's the question before Jefferson County Public Schools officials. Stuart Middle School 7th grade teacher Dan Holden, a veteran of 27 years of teaching, burns small flags in two different classes and then asks students to write an opinion paper. Hypocritical conservatives know but never admit that it is one thing to endorse freedom in the abstract but another to actually act like you mean it. August 20 * Sri Lankan journalist Sinnathamby Sivamaharajah is assassinated in Jaffna, in northern Sri Lanka. * Japan bans imports of herbicide resistant genetiicaly modified Southern long grain rice. * UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan describes the IDF's August 18 raid as a violation of the ceasefire agreement. His speokesperson stated, "The Secretary-General is deeply concerned about a violation by the Israeli side of the cessation of hostilities as laid out in Security Council resolution 1701." Lebanese PM Fouad Siniora described the raid as "a naked violation" of the ceasefire agreement. The second Bush administration is silent. Did the White House pre-approve this as well? * Sunni snipers kill 17 Shi'a pilgrims at the shrine of Imam Moussa Kadhim in what the second Bush administration still insistes is not yet a sectarian civil war. August 21 * Saddam Hussein refuses to enter plea in his genocide trial. * Virtually unknown Republican candidate Alan Schlesinger for the Connecticut U.S. Senate seat travels to Washington DC in search of support and money because he is almost shunned by his national party in favor of virtual Republican Joe Lieberman. August 22 * Italy offers 2000-3000 troops for the UN peace-keeping force in southern Lebanon. * Official indirtect admission of a U.S. Marine Corps recuitment shortfall in the form of an involuntary recall of reservists to duty. * Nepotism Punished. Alaska Republican Gov. Frank H. Murkowski comes in THIRD in Republican primary after Sarah Palin and John Binkley. August 23 August 24 * Challenged by the Italian offer of 2000 to 3000 Italian troops, France increases the number of French troops it will send to Lebanon from 400 to 2000, if it gets to lead the UN peacekeeping force. * U.S. State department opens inquiry into Israeli use of U.S. made cluster bombs in the Israeli-Lebanese War. What about the sales of cluster bombs from Isreal to Ethiopia dfor use in the Ethiopian-Eritrean War? * Republican Representative Christopher Shays of Connecticut (Chair of the House Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security), formerly an ardent supporter of the war in Iraq, says the Bush administration should set a time frame for withdrawing U.S. troops. * Police defuse car bomb near home of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and charge Army Lt. Thawatchai Klinchana of the Internal Operations Security Command with plotting against the Thai PM. * U.S. President George W. Bush's "Positive Rating" rises slightly to 34%. August 25 August 26 * Fox News commentator Sean Hannity states that "there are things in life worth fighting and dying for and one of 'em is making sure Nancy Pelosi doesn't become Speaker." (Source: The Sean Hannity Show ABC Radio Networks August 29, 2006). Although Pelosi was elected Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Hannity neither fought not died to prevent her from becoming the most powerful women in American political history. Perhaps he just meant for his less intelligent listeners to fight and die instead. * Florida Republican Representative, U.S. Senate candidate and self-appointed spokesperson for Almighty God Katherine Harris anounced that God did not intend for the U.S. to be a "nation of secular laws" and that a failure to elect Christians to political office will allow lawmaking bodies to "legislate sin." Her comments were published in the weekly journal of the Florida Baptist State Convention. Florida Democratic Debbie Wasserman Schultz commented that she was "disgusted" by those statements "and deeply disappointed in Rep. Harris personally." * Conservative cartoonist Edward Bruce Tinsley is arrested for public intoxication. * Pakistani Army missile attack kills 80 year old Balochi elite Nawab Akbar Bugti together with 38 armed rebels and 21 security personnel. Massive rioting in Quetta during which a protester was shot dead. August 27 August 28 August 29 August 30 August 31 * U.S. President George W. Bush gives speech to the safest of all possible venues: the American Legion Convention in Salt Lake City. He tells his audience that America is at war with Terror and Islamic fundamentalism, which are the "successors to fascists, Nazis and communists." * One small step for California, one giant leap for the planet: California State Senate passes the Global Warming Solutions Act AB32 on a vote of 23 to 14. The bill now before the Governor would reduce carbon emissions by 25% by 2020, bringing levels back to 1990. September * September: Sally Lieber is elected California Assembly Speaker Pro Tem. * September: U.S. President George W. Bush's "Positive Rating" is only 38%. * September 1: Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, the Tiger of Baluchistan, is buried. * September 2: Aircraft crash kills 12 British troops in the MNF in Afghanistan. * September 2: Sri Lankan Navy sinks as Tamil Tigers boats, killing more than 100 guerrillas. * September 3: British authorities arrest 12 in London and Manchester on suspicion of recruiting and training for terrorist attacks. * September 3: ESA's Smart-1 (Small Mission for Advanced Research and Technology) probe hits the moon. * September 4: U.S. artillery and airstrikes kill 50-60 suspected Taliban fighters; the Taliban are still undefeated why? * September 5: Just a little more pressure for Vietnamization. British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett comments that transferring Iraqi security to the Iraqi government security is essential. * September 6: British Labour Party dissidents resign to protest Tony Blair's refusal to name a date for stepping down: MP Tom Watson (Wets Bromwich East) Text of his Letter, MP Wayne David (Caerphilly), MP Ian Lucas (Wrexham), MP Mark Tami (Alyn & Deeside) and MP David Wright (Telford). Text of their Letter. * September 6: democratic Israel announces it will lift its air and sea blockade of democratic Lebanon. * September 6: Illinois Governor George Ryan is sentenced to prison for 6.5 years after being convicted of racketeering, conspiracy, fraud and other offenses involving payoffs. Most news sources self-censor and fail to include the information that Ryan is a Republican. They also fail to state that the sentence was comparatively light. Who handed down the light sentence? U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer. * September 8: California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger apologized Friday for commenting during closed-door meeting that Cubans and Puerto Ricans are naturally feisty, temperamental because of their "black blood" and "Latino blood." * September 8: 37 killed and 125 wounded in horrific multiple bomb attack on a Mosque in Malegaon in Maharashtra in India. * September 8: Republican-controlled U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee releases much delayed and massively redacted report that indicates no connection between the secualr Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. Why wasn't this released prior to the November 2004 general election? * September 8: More evidence of a resurgent Taliban: 2 U.S. soldiers and 16 Afghans killed in massive suicide bombing in Kabul. * September 8-10: Stupendous blunder by ABC & Disney. ABC frantically re-edits its $40 million conservative fantasy The Path to 9/11 to remove some of the more despicable lies about senior officials of the Clinton administration. * September 10: Tongan King Taufa'ahau Tupou IV dies. * September 11: George W. Bush attempts to cash in on American grief over the fifth anniversary of September 11, 2001 with a series of speeches. * Septemebr 11: 2000 angry protesters meet British PM Tony Blair in Beirut. One banner reads: "In the name of the Lebanese people: Thank you for destroying our homes, neighborhoods and memories." * September 14: Former Texas Governor Anne Richards dies. * September 14: World oil price stabilizes at $64 a barrel. * September 15: Only Poland offers to send more troops for the UN forces to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan. UN officers want at elast 2,500 more and Warsaw offers 1,000. * September 15: Blast from the past. Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, senior Sunni Muslim cleric in Lebanon, demands apology from conservative Pope Benedict XVI's comments about comments about Islam made by 14th century Byzantine Christian Emperor Manuel Paleologos II. * September 18: Bicycle suicide bomber kills 4 Canadian soldiers and wounds 27 Afghans. Romania promised to increase its troop levels in the country from 400 to 500. * September 19: U.S. President George W. Bush and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejab speak before the UN. Bush gabbles about electoral democracy in the Middle East and Ahmadinejab rants about global inequality and monotheism as a panacea. * September 19: Miltiary coup in Thailand. * September 19-20: Protestsd against Socialist Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany lead to take-over of headquarters of Hungarian state television, MTV. * September 19: U.S. Army General John Abizaid announced no U.S. troop cuts in Iraq until mod-2007. (Wow, an implicit prediction that the situation will be better after the November 2, 2006 Congressional election. When that doesn't work out sometime in September 2008 he can predict that the stabilizing situation will permit U.S. troop reductions in mid-2009!) * September 19: Deval Patrick wins Massachusetts’ Democratic primary for governor easily. * September 20: Thai Army Gen. Sondhi Boonyaratkalin promises to restore civilian democratic rule in the future. * September 21: Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni declares that Palestinians have no right to return to their homeland. Palestinians comprise the planet's largest refugee population. Might Makes Right (but only if you are a thug). * September 22: Pakistani military dictator Gen. Pervez Musharraf reveals that Richard Armitage, then deputy secretary of state, told Pakistan's intelligence director, "'Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age'" unless Pakistan cooperated with the U.S. in its 2001-2002 war against Afghanistan. * September 24: The anti-Syrian Lebanese Forces (Christian) militia warlord Samir Geagea postures: "We are the victors, and yet we do not feel it was victory but rather that a real catastrophe befell our country, and that our fate and destiny are at the mercy of the winds." The 53 year old warlord was freed after 11 years in prison for war crimes Geagea was freed under an amnesty law passed by the Lebanese parliament in July 2005. * September 24: Republican George Allen very carefully, almost guiltily admits that he has Jewish ancestry. Is he living in the 1950s? Are his supporters? * September 27: A flustered White House spokesconservative Tony Snow dodges and weaves through reporters' questions pointing up OBVIOUS contradictions between conclusions in the NIE Summary and words coming out of the mouth of Pres. George W. Bush. The White House refused Wednesday to release the rest of a leaked "secret" intelligence report. * September 27: Berlin's Deutsche Oper cancels production of Mozart's "Idomeneo" is a fit of moral cowardice. Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble characterizes the decision as "crazy." * Septmeber 27: Kaiser familt Foundation announces finding that the average cost of a family insurance plan increased another 7.7 percent this year, to $11,500. * September 27: Bosnian Serb leader Momcilo Krajisnik is sentenced by the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal to 27 years in prison for crimes against humanity. * September 27: Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signs Global Warming Solutions Act. * September 27: Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf appears on “The Daily Show” to promote his book. * September 28: Is it a civil war yet Republcians? Data released showing that 250,000 Iraqis, some 40,000 families, have fled sectarian violence and registered as refugees. * September 28: Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Afghani President Hamid Karzai shake hands with U.S. President George W. Bush at the White House but refuse to shake hands with wach other. * September 28: Confucius's Birthday. October * October 3: South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon wins informal poll for the next UN Secretary-General. But will he take his orders from Washington? * October 3: Horth Korean government announces that it would conduct a nuclear weapons test. North Korea lacks oil deposits or proximity to Israel. So officials of the second Bush administration officials respond mildly. * October 3: Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva locked in tight runoff election with Social Democrat Geraldo Alckmin. * October 4: Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald publisher Jesus Diaz Jr. resigns in dispute over two reporters and a freelance contributor for El Nuevo Herald taking jobs on the side as propagandists with Radio and TV Marti. He had fired them and then re-hired them bewfore his own resignation. Different journalistic standards apply at the two papers. Real democracy in Miami is a hollow as it ever was in pre-communist Cuba and for the same reasons. * October 6: U.S. Department of Labor announces that the American economy added only 51,000 jobs in September, with an September unemplyment rate of 4.6%. The scheduled pre-election economic good times has no legs. * October 7: Crusading Russian investigating journalist Anna Politkovskaya is assassinated in the elevator of her apartment building. * October 8: North Korea conducts its first nuclear weapons test. * October 9: U.S. Department of Defense reports that 776 soldiers were wounded in action in Iraq in October, the highest number since November 2004 with the Battle of Fallujah. * October 11: u.S. president George W. Bush holds long (for him) press conference during which he responds with barely restrained anger to some questions, with incoherent synntax to others and attempts to substitute emphatic statements of principle and belief for logic and evidence. He fails to avoid the obvious contradictions between previous statements and present behavior with respect to North Korea. * October 11: U.S. Department of Justice indicts "Azzam the American," a.k.a. Adam Yedihe Gadahn for treason just before the 2006 Midterm Congressional elections. Many believe the timing to be suspicious, perhaps the result of an elite conspiracy to assist flagging Republican electoral fortunes by re-focusing public attention on terrorism and away from the Mark Foley scandal. If true such a decision would be dishonourable, a betrayal of trust. * October 12-14: Israeli air and ground attacks on Hamas in Gaza. * OCTOBER 12: Phoenix Anarchists and O'odham youth protest Toxic Waste dump to be located outside the O’odham sacred village of Quitovac, Mexico. * October 12: British General Sir Richard Dannatt tells the unvarnished truth about the political and military situation in Iraq to The Daily Mail. * October 13: U.S. President George W. Bush's "Positive Rating" is only 34%%. * October 13: British government scrambles to varnish the unvarnished truth spoken about Iraq by General Sir Richard Dannatt. * October 13: Republican Rep. Bob Ney of 18th Congressional District of Ohio pleads guilty to corruption charges involving the Jack Abramoff scandal. * October 13: Air America files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy but will continue broadcasting. * October 14: 9 Palestinians die in fighting in Gaza. * October 15: Date on which Thailand was scheduled to conduct parliamentary elections before the September miltiary coup. * October 15: General election in Ecuador - tight presidential race between 43 year old populist leftist Rafael Correa against 55 year old Banana Republican Alvaro Noboa results in second round run-off election on November 26. * October 16: U.S. declares its official belief that North Korea actually conducted a nuclear test. * October 16: Horrific truck bombing in NE Sri Lanka kills 98 sailors and wounds more than 150. * October 18: U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld still can't get his historical analogy to function properly - employs the Munich analogy in speech at the U.S. Air Force war college claims that the war against Islamist terrorism is like the fight against fascism. If this is WWII all over again why do the neo-cons keep claiming that the US is fighting a unique enemy etc? Somebody neds to keep Geroge W. Bush updated on the historical analogy du jout: In an interview with George Stephanopalous Bush admitted that Vietnam might be the proper comparison. * October 18: CNN Opinion Research poll finds 74% of American respondents think Congress is out og touch with and 79% think Big Business has too much influence ober the second Bush adminsitration's policies. * October 19: Joint Economic Committee (JEC) of U.S. Congress announces it is investigating the amount of commerce taking place in virtual game worlds. * October 21: U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice flies from China to Russia to negotiate a common policy on North Korean nuclear proliferation - helping to birth another second Bush foreign policy failure. * October 21: Senior military commanders in Iraq recalled to Washington, DC for discussions with the civilian political authorities to see if they can figure out how to get the Iraq War story straight. Perhaps they could all start blaming Bill Clinton! * October 23: Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih tells reporters in London that, "there is no option for the international community to cut and run...The fate of Iraq is vital to the future of the Middle East and the world order." (Maybe he should try to visit the Republic of Vietnam on the way home!) * October 23: The government of Sudan orders Jan Pronk out of the country for telling the plain truth. * October 24: Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Michael Somare denounces the Liberal government of Australian Prime Minister Howard] for its arrogance: "I think this is typical of an arrogant attitude of your leaders, treating the leaders of the region with contempt." * October 23: Israeli PM Ehud Olmert strikes a deal that adds the far right Israel Beiteinu (Isreal is Our Home) political party to his governing party coalition. * October 24: Vice President Dick Cheney describes "waterboarding" as "robust" interrogation in an interview with Scott Hennen: Text * October 25: New Jersey's Supreme Court votes 4 to 3 in decsion holding that homosexuals are entitled to the same rights as heterosexuals, but left it to the New Jersey state legislature to decide whether that will take the form of marriage or civil union. * October 25: Storm of public outrage at comments by Egyptian born senior Suuni Muslim Australian cleric Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali in Sydney's Lakemba mosque that women without veils are like "uncovered meat" who attract sexual predators. * October 25: U.S. President George W. Bush's "Positive Rating" is only 34%. * October 25: Obese former prescription drug addict and hate radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh states that Michael J. Fox "was either off his medication or was acting" in his campaign television advertisement for Missouri Democratic Senate candidate Claire McCaskill. Alerted to the public reaction to his statements, Limbaugh quickly apologized. * October 26: In a last minute effort to mobilize votes among the xenophobic for Republican Congressional candidates, Pres. George W. Bush signs H.R. 6061 to build 700 more miles of the White Bread Curtain. * October 27: Photojournalist Bradley Roland Will is shot and killed in Oaxaca. * October 28: AWOL U.S. Army Pvt. Kyle Snyder returns to the U.S. from Canada. * October 29: Mexican President Vicente Fox sends Federal police into Oaxaca to put down protests against the corrupt state government of Gov. Ruiz. One protester is killed as they storm the manin square in Oaxaca. * October 29: Lula wins. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva re-elected in landslide in second round victory, 60.54% to 39.46%. * October 30: Death of U.S. Marine in Regimental Combat Team 5 from injuries sustained during combat on October 29 brings to 100 the number of servicepersons killed in Iraq in October. The death toll for Americans will reach 105 by the end of the month. Previous high monthly death tolls include 107 in January 2005, 135 in April 2004, and 137 in November 2004. The U.S. Department of Defense revealed that it cannot account for 14,030 of the 370,251 weapons it supplied to the Iraqi security forces, including 13,180 semiautomatic pistols, 751 assault rifles and 99 machine guns. Do they now arm the insurgents and militiamen? * October 30: British government releases the Stern Report on global warming predicting economic consequences worse than the Great Depression. * October 30: Former AWOL U.S. Army Pvt. Kyle Snyder just returned to the U.S. from Canada goes AWOL again after the Army tells him he is being returned to his unit in Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri. * October 31: Now that it has gotten away from thumping its nuclear nose at Washignton and Tokyo, Pyongyang agrees to return to six party talks and Washington counts that as a "diplomatic victory." * October 31: Iraqi PM Nuri al-Maliki orders U.S. troops to "un-surround" Sadr City, the part of Baghdad controlled by the Mehdi Army. Those positions and militiamen are going to be needed for the stand up fight when the last U.S. helicopter lifts off from the Green Zone. * October 31: Cote d'Ivoire cancels presidential and parliamentary elections. November November * U.S. President George W. Bush's "Positive Rating" falls to 31%. November 1 * November 1-7: Isreali military occupies Palestinian town of Beit Hanoun, killing 70 before withdrawing. One of the dead is a 12 year old girl killed by an Israeli sniper. * First American soldier killed in Iraq in November dies. November 2 * Author William Styron dies at age 81 in Martha's Vinyard. * Desperate Republican Pres. George W. Bush campaigns for incumbent Republican Sen. Conrad Burns in Montana. November 3 * Rev. Ted Haggard of the New Life Church, an opponent of gay marriage, admits to "some indiscretions." News Report in The Advocate * US Embassy in Nairobi warns Americans travelling in East Africa of terrorist threats, the result of the Bush administration's failure to prevent a radical Sunni Islamist movement from taking power in Somalia. November 5 * Nicaragua conducts presidential and parliamentary elections. 60-year-old, former Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega leads with 40% of the vote in the presidential race. November 6 * November 6-17: Delegates from 189 countries meet in Nairobu for the latest Kyoto Protocol Climate Change Conference. November 7 * Compromise candidate Panama elected to the UN Security Council after 48 votes and the withdrawal of left-populist Latin American leader Venezuela and U.S. client state Guatemala. * Election Day in the United States. Democratic candidates do well against their Republican counetrparts because of the popular anger about the War in Iraq, multiple Republican scaandals, and high turnout do in part to several popular initiative referenda. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is forced to resign as scapegoat. Robert Gates designated to replace him. November 8 * Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, co-founder of the Paris weekly L'Express, dies at age 82. November 10 * William D. Telzerow photographs distinctive "donuts on a rope" contrail east of Dayton, Ohio, which suggests that experimental research into "pulsed detonation engines" or other forms of exotic propulsion continues. November 12 * Dr. Sun Yat-sen's Birthday. * In a CNN interview White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, a.k.a. Josh Bolten tells America that Bush is ready for "fresh eyes" on the problem of Iraq: "We need a fresh perspective. And that is why he has asked his Pentagon, General Pace, the chairman of the joint chiefs, conducting a review of all of our options in Iraq. He has asked his other national security agencies to do the same in parallel. We are looking forward to the recommendations of the Baker-Hamilton bipartisan Iraq Study Group. And we are looking forward to a dialogue with bipartisan leaders in Congress....So it is clearly time to put fresh eyes on the problem. And the president has always been interested in tactical adjustments. But the ultimate goal remains the same, which is success in Iraq. And that means a democratic Iraq that can govern itself, sustain itself, defend itself, and be an ally in the war on terror and not a haven failed state for more terrorists." (Decoded, this means that the administration has no idea what to about the Iraqi quagmire it created and is looking for some way to dump responsibility onto the Pentagon, the Democrats, Iran anyone....) November 15 * Desperate to find a way out of Iraq, British PM Tony Blair urges negotiations with Syria and Iran. * With Israeli PM Ehud Olmert standing by his side, U.S. Pres. George W. Bush rejects negotiations with Iran about Iraq and says that a nuclear-armed Iran would not only threaten Israel but loom as an "incredibly destabilising" threat to the region and the world. How does the region feel about nuclear armed Israel? * Paula J. Dobriansky, U.S. Undersecretary of State and chief of the U.S. delegation to the U.N. climate conference in Nairobi speaks these words: "The United States is committed to addressing the serious global challenge of climate change." Preposterous. November 16 * 219,000 French Socialist Party members vote to nominate Segolene Royal as their 2007 presidential candidate. November 17 * U.S. Pres. George W. Bush arrives in Hanoi for the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) summit and in an single comment demonstrates the hypocrisy, arrogance and ideological blindness to fact and morality that has made his administration the worst in U.S. history. Asked about the parallel between the Vietnam War and his Iraq War, Bush responds: "We tend to want there to be instant success in the world, and the task in Iraq is going to take a while. It's just going to take a long period of time for the ideology that is hopeful-and that is an ideology of freedom-to overcome an ideology of hate. We'll succeed unless we quit." * Marijuana decriminalization advocate Milton Friedman dies. * Fox News Channel gives extensive news coverage to O.J. Simpson's If I Did It book in apparent attempt to resuscitate the O.J. Simpson Murder Trial news story and divert attention from the sea change in American politics following the Democratic victory in the November 2006 mid term elections. November 18 * Disappointment among environmental scientists and activists about rthe Nairobi climate conference: Steve Sawyer, Climate Policy Advisor for Greenpeace International says, "We have seen small, incremental steps forward in a belaboured process. These talks require a dramatic increase in political will." November 19 * Mauritania conducts legislative elections. Violence free and fair. November 20 * U.S. Pres. George W. Bush spends 6 hours in Jakarta, Indonesia avoiding crowds of protestors who scatter in the face of torrential rain. Indonesian President Susilo Yudhoyono suggests publicly that the U.S. governemnrt consider, "a proper timetable for disengagement of U.S. miltary forces. November 21 * Lebanese Maronite politician Pierre Gemayel is assassinated in Beirut. November 22 * Netherlands conducts parliamentary election. November 23 * Car bombings in Sadr City in Baghdad kill 215. Is it a civil war Bushies? * Former Russian KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko dies in London of poisoning. November 26 * Second round run-off Ecuadoran election between populist leftist Rafael Correa against 55 year old Banana Republican Alvaro Noboa. November 27 * U.S. Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and his senior advisers discuss plan to remove seven United States attorneys, 10 days before the dismissals were carried out. In a March 13, 2007 news conference Gonzalez will claim he did not participate in any discussions about the removals. This "misstatement of fact" will be discovered on March 23, 2007. November 29 * Tennessee Republican Senator Frist announces he will not seek the 2008 Republican nomination for President. Perhaps this was the result of a long distance diagnosis of his chances? December December 1 * Only a factual relativist could spout stupidity like this: Justice Antonin Scalia comemnts that, "I gather that there’s something of a consensus on warming, but not a consensus on how much of that is attributable to human activity." * U.S. Supreme Court agrees to hear the case of Morse v. Frederick. December 2 * December 2-3: Open ended protest in Martyrs Square by Hezbollah against what it describes as the corrupt, pro-American/anti-Syrian government of PM Fouad Seniora. December 3 * Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, former Chilean torture state dictator, suffers an "acute heart attack." Many of the more than 3000 people killed by his regime died of heart attacks while being tortured. December 4 * UN Secretary General Kofi Anan describes the War in Iraq as worse than a civil war. CBC News Report * Kevin Rudd defeats Kim Beazley 49 votes to 39 to take ovfer leadership of the Australian Labor Party. * Hugo Chavez wins reelection as President of Venezuela overwhelmingly. * Conservative cartoonist Edward Bruce Tinsley is arrested in Columbus, Indiana and charged with DWI, a blood-alcohol level of 0.14, nearly twice the level at which a driver is considered intoxicated in Indiana. He posts a $755 bond. December 5 December 6 December 7 December 8 December 9 * Do-nothing Republican Congress convenes after passing corporate welfare legislation shifting $4 billion in medical care costs from coal companies to the Federal government. December 10 * Taiwan conducts Referendum Election. * (Kurdish) Iraqi President Jalal Talabani criticizes the report of the Iraqi Study Group. * Secretary of Defense and co-author of the failed Republican War in Iraq Donald Rumsfeld pays a surprise visit to U.S. troops in Iraq. December 11 * Former Chilean military dictator and unrepentant mass murderer Gen. Augusto Pinochet dies and his death is greated with wild celebration in the streets of Santiago. Picture Henry Kissinger and Margaret Thatcher watching news coverage of the celebration. December 12 * Gutsy Ohio Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich declares he is running for President in 2008. December 12-13 * Iranian Foreign Ministry's Institute for Political and International Studies hosts ridiculous Holocaust Conference in Tehran. December 13 * U.S. Army is reportedly demanding "full access" to the 346,000-strong Army National Guard and the 196,000-strong Army Reserves, asking incoming Secretary of Deefense Robert Gates to eliminate DoD restrictions on frequency and duration of involuntary call-ups for reservists. * South Dakota Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson experiences a "health scare" while discussing political issues on-line and major media sources, including NPR, are so crass that they repeatedly broadcast the Senator's moment of disorientation. December 14 * The Man Without the Plan: U.S. Pres. George W. Bush says he won't be rushed into deciding what to do about the Republican War in Iraq. He still cannot admit that there is no winning strategy because that would mean admitting he was the political leader most responsible for the quagmire: "I've heard some ideas that would lead to defeat. I reject those ideas — ideas such as leaving before the job is done, ideas such as not helping this Iraqi government take the necessary and hard steps to be able to do its job." Source: Peter Spiegel & Julian E. Barnes. "Bush Warns He Won't Be Rushed on Plans for Iraq: The President Says a Delay Will Allow Input From His New Defense Secretary. He Meets With the Joint Chiefs." Los Angeles Times. December 14, 2006. Ruling class frat boys don't admit mistakes; they dither while they try to find others to blame. December 15 December 16 * Iran conducts elections for the 86 member Assembly of Experts and municipal governments. December 17 December 18 December 19 * Next to last Republican elected official admits the U.S. is "not winning" in Iraq. U.S. Pres. George W. Bush adopts General Peter Pace's 'we’re not winning, we’re not losing' assessment. At some point Bush will in fact grasp that that means we are losing the war. So when will V.P. Dick Cheney admit publicly that we aren't winning the war? * Miltiary Patriotic Tourism! Bill O'Reilly can't be taken seriously as a foreign correspondent so he explains his safe little trip to Iraq as one of saying, "thanks to the Americans who are fighting a brutal war." O'Reilly Really Does Take Himself Seriously Does O'Reilly think that any war is ever anything but brutal? O'Reilly makes the following absurd claim: "And one final word directed to those families who have lost sons and daughters in Iraq and to those military people who have suffered injuries: No matter what happens in the future in Iraq, the USA has freed millions of people." Only an ideologue could convince themselves of something like that. The Iraqis aren't free now because there is no order to protect liberty. When the U.S. troops do leave Iraq and it descends even further into civil war, the violence will still be the fault of conservatives like O'Reilly. * New York State Senate Republican majority leader Joseph Bruno admits he is being investigated by the FBI about his business dealings with Joseph Abbruzzese. * Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) attempts to have Breaking the Silence expelled from the Israel on Campus Coalition (ICC). News Report December 20 * U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates visits Baghdad. December 21 * Four U.S. Marines finally charged with murder of some 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians in the Haditha Massacre. Astonishingly, they are not jailed despite being accused of mass murder. Military patriotism overwhelms moral decency. * Dictatorial Turkmenistani President Saparmurat Niyazov dies at age 66. December 22 * Gurbungali Berdymukhamedov becomes Acting President of Trukmenistan. December 23 * Former Vermont Sen. Robert Stafford dies at age 93. * Iraqi military intelligence officer 1st Lt. Hussein Jabir is asassinated in in downtown Diwaniyah, Iraq. * U.S. airstrike kills Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Osmani, reportedly responsible for the destruction of the Buddhas at Bamiyan. Observers suspect he will be reincranated as a dung beetle 10,000 times. * Secular protester uses self-immolation in Bakersfield, California to express opposition to the Kern High School decision to change the names of winter and spring breaks to Christmas and Easter vacation. News Report December 24 * Pitcairn Islands conducts parliamentary election. December 25 * Ethiopian airstrikes against Somali Islamist regime. * Christmas provocation in Baghdad: U.S. arrests 4 Iranians, 2 of them diplomats, there as guests of Iraqi Shi's leaders. December 27 * U.S. Interior Department proposes listing Polar Bears as an endangered species. * French Corot Space Telescope discovers its first extra-solar planet: Corot Exo-1b. December 28 * U.S. Pres. George W. Bush continues to reveal he is unequal to the responsibility of being president as he seeks some way to achieve the impossible or at the very least avoid poltical responsibility for the Republican War in Iraq: "We've got more consultation to do until I talk to the country about the plan." An estimated 100 Iraqis and 2 Americans die every day while America's worst president dithers. Reminding everyone else just how much Bush doesn't understand the situation, Bush said, "The key to success in Iraq is to have a government that's willing to deal with the elements that are trying to prevent this young democracy from succeeding." There is no "key to success in Iraq" and Iraq is not a "young democracy." * Peace activist Cindy Sheehan is arrested in Crawford, Texas. * Former North Carolina Senator John Edwards formally announces he is running for the Democratic nomination for President in 2008. * Sunni Islamists topped from power in Mogadishu, Somalia when it falls to an invading Ethiopian army with ancilliary Somali puppet army. December 29 * Opera censorship reveals limits of artistic liberty in "the West." La Scala cancels 9 performances of Leonard Bernstein's Candide in June and July 2007 which featured actors wearing the masks of U.S. Pres. George W. Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Jacques Chirac and former Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi and clad in underwear and ties featuring their respective national flags. * U.S. Pres. George W. Bush, Laura Bush and their two Scottish terriers, Barney and Miss Beazley are moved to an armored vehicle when a tornado warning is issued in central Texas. * Maine State Representative Chris Barstow, Democrat from Gorham, introduces a bill to control use, sale or possession of Salvia divinorum. Perhaps living in Maine is far too exciting already to permit use of this mild hallucinogen. * Somali transitional Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Gedi makes symbolic visit to Mogadishu and is met with cheers and jeers. December 30, 2006 * Former Iraqi Baathist dictator Saddam Hussein is executed by hanging at dawn. Islamist Shi'a militiamen present as witnesses taunt the condemned and succeed in making him look dignified. There are brief celebrations by Shi'a Iraqis in Baghdad and Christian Iraqis in Dearborn, Michigan before most Iraqis in Iraq go back to the serious business of sectarian civil war. The Republican second Bush administration and Iranian Islamist government of Iran are united in voicing approval of the execution. * Elites and masses yawn. Washington state funeral of former Pres. Gerald Ford draws on 35 members of Congress Vice-President & Mrs. Dick Cheney, Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, six of the nine members of the Supreme Court, including Ford appointee John Paul Stevens, and aging war criminal Henry Kissinger. Video of Kissinger shows him nodding off while Cheney spoke. Small public turnout at the Capitol Rotunda. December 31, 2006 * American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists issues guidelines advisiong Down Syndrome screening for all pregnancies. * Six people are injured when four bombs explode in Bangkok, Thailand. See Also *Election of 2006 * Category: Year